Roll Call is reporting that Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin (D-MI) will defy Defense Secretary Robert Gates’ request to delay legislative action on repealing Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell until the Pentagon Study Group complete its year-long review of the policy and could possibly attach repeal to this year’s defense authorization bill. Levin’s statement comes just days after he asked Gates to clarify that the intent of the Pentagon study was to determine how, rather than whether to repeal the ban:

“What we ought to do is repeal it but make the effective date after the report,” Levin said. The Michigan Democrat said he’s not sure yet if he has the votes to repeal the law, however. He said he will move forward “if we can.” Levin said he hopes to add the repeal to the Defense authorization bill but will delay the implementation of the repeal until 90 days after the review is completed, which is expected by the end of the year.

Levin pointed to Gates’ letter to him last week saying the review was on how to implement the repeal, not whether to do so. “He’s reached a conclusion on whether it ought to be repealed; he’s already judged this issue,” Levin said. “He favors the repeal. So have I.”

While it’s unclear if Levin will have enough votes on the committee to attach the repeal, the Chairman’s support for a delayed implementation strategy could be a significant victory for LGBT groups who have been struggling to win support for the measure. Levin’s decision also comes on the day that gay veterans, organized by the Human Rights Campaign and Servicemembers United, lobbied Congress to repeal the ban. The veterans met “with Gen. Carter Ham and Jeh Johnson – the co-chairs of the working group – to discuss the implementation of a repeal of the policy” and key Congressional leaders like Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA), Rep. Frank Wolf (R-VA), Rep. Jim Moran (D-VA), Sen. Jim Webb (D-VA) and Mark Warner (D-VA).

It’s still unclear if House Armed Services Committee Chairman Ike Skelton (D-MO), who does not support repeal, will follow the delay-implementation approach. Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) would not commit to “allowing a vote on the amendment,” saying that “We’ll be talking to the chairman of the committee about how he wants to proceed with his bill, but we are committed to repealing ‘don’t ask, don’t tell.” “We are counting on that happening at the end of this year when we see the report on how they intend to repeal it, but not a question of whether they will.”

Americans support ending Dont’ Ask, Don’t Tell by overwhelming majorities, however. Yesterday, Gallup released a poll showing that “a large majority of Americans (70%) continue to favor allowing openly gay men and women to serve in the military, with continued majority support from every key demographic subgroup.”

Over at Good As You, Jeremy Hooper catches Rep. Steve King (R-IA) saying that employers only discriminate against gay and lesbian people because “they wear their sexuality on their sleeve.”

During a conversation with Family Research Council’s Tony Perkins about the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA), King re-called a story of how his colleague State Senator Jerry Behn would tempt gay activists to guess his sexual orientation to prove that one can’t easily identify orientation, all the while cracking a joke that Behn was obviously straight:

KING: And he said, ‘let me ask you a question.’ ‘Am I heterosexual or am I homosexual?’ And they looked him up and down, actually they should have know, but they said, ‘we don’t know.’ And he said, ‘exactly, my point. If you don’t project it, if you don’t advertise it, how would anyone know to discriminate against you?’ And that’s at the basis of this. So if people wear their sexuality on their sleeve and then they want to bring litigation against someone that they would point their finger at and say ‘ you discriminate.‘ …This is the homosexual lobby taking it out on the rest of society and they are demanding affirmation for their lifestyle, that’s at the bottom of this.

Listen:

Of course, far from affirming “their lifestyle,” as King calls it, ENDA would simply prohibit public and private employers from using an individual’s sexual orientation or gender identity “as the basis for employment decisions, such as hiring, firing, promotion or compensation.” As Hooper put it, “What the far-right refuses to admit is that ENDA protects everyone, not just LGBT people! Everyone has a sexual orientation. Everyone has a gender identity. Every employer, including LGBT ones, have the capacity to unfairly discriminate on the basis of gender/sexuality. So therefore, everyone benefits from a world where education and training and experience and viewpoints (which very well might include contrasting ideas about work related to causes, even LGBT/anti-LGBT ones) and merit are the qualities of job consideration.”

Iowa is one of 12 states that already protects its citizens from “discrimination in the areas of employment, housing, credit, public accommodations and education” on the basis of race, color, creed, national origin, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, pregnancy, physical disability, mental disability, retaliation, age , familial status, or marital status.

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Moments after President Obama nominated Solicitor General Elena Kagan to the Supreme Court, Republicans lashed out against the nominee, claiming that she blocked military recruitment during her tenure as dean of Harvard Law School. Last night, Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) said that Kagan “block[ed] these wonderful men and women from being on the campus,” and this morning the Washington Times wrote, “as dean of the Harvard Law School, Ms. Kagan banned military judge advocate general recruiters from campus in protest of the military’s ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ rules on open homosexuality.” MSNBC host Joe Scarborough was so sure that the military was kicked off campus, he seemed genuinely shocked when White House adviser Valarie Jarrett set the record straight.

Watch the exchange:

Indeed, military recruiters operated on campus throughout Kagan’s tenure, despite the University’s long-standing policy requiring “any employer using the Office of Career Services for recruiting to sign a statement indicating that it did not discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation or certain other criteria.” Since the mid 1980s, the military had been able to recruit on campus through the HLS Veterans Association and the University allowed the military into the Office of Career Services in 2002, after the Department of Defense “stiffened the Solomon Amendment, threatening to cut off funding if any part of a school barred military recruiters.”

Robert Clark, a former Harvard Law School dean explains in today’s Wall Street Journal, “When Ms. Kagan became dean in July of 2003, she upheld this newer policy. Military recruiters used OCS services, but at the beginning of each interviewing season she wrote a public memorandum explaining the exception to the school’s nondiscrimination policy, stating her objection to ‘don’t ask, don’t tell,’ and expressing her strong view that military service is a noble and socially valuable career path that should be encouraged and open to all of our graduates.”

Kagan only prevented the military from recruiting through the career office after the Third Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against the Solomon amendment. Even then, she supported their right to access to students via the veterans association. Once the Supreme Court overruled the Third Circuit and upheld and Solomon Amendment, however, Kagan regrettably reinstated the exemption for military recruiters, letting them back into the career office.

As Clark writes, “Outside observers may disagree with the moral and policy judgments made by those at Harvard Law School. But it would be very wrong to portray Elena Kagan as hostile to the U.S. military. Quite the opposite is true.”